


Coffee and Rain

by crazybeagle



Category: Rent - Larson
Genre: F/M, Implied Relationships, Male-Female Friendship, Opposites Attract, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-02
Updated: 2012-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-01 00:21:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazybeagle/pseuds/crazybeagle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Well done, Mark. That's what you get for asking a lesbian out." <br/>This was written for my lovely roomie, who requested a Mark/Joanne. I suppose it's more of a friendship fic than anything else--with, perhaps, the faintest glimmer of something more--but their relationship has such a fascinating dynamic that I had to try it out. It's post-musical and sort of movieverse, I suppose, as long as you take into consideration the scene of the film involving Maureen hitting on Alexi Darling's secretary, and Maureen's subsequent "proposal." (However, that said, I do infinitely prefer the musical to the movie....)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The door of the loft slammed. Mark had been sorting out his, Roger's, and Mimi's dirty laundry for tomorrow's excursion to the Laundromat. Roger and Mimi were currently down at Mimi's apartment, doing God-knows-what.

It was Joanne, who Mark knew had a key to the loft. She was wearing one of her typical pants-suits with high heels and a tailored jacket that indicated she had just come from work. She was wet and her hair was flat, and she looked thoroughly miserable. Obviously she had not been expecting the sudden downpour that had begun about an hour ago.

"Joanne?" he asked, confused. She never came here on her own, not without Maureen.

She just stood in the doorway. Her miserable expression gave way to an uncomfortable one. "Uh…hey, Mark."

"You can come in," he told her. It was strange; he'd never before felt like he needed to give someone "permission" to enter the loft.

She entered with a mumbled "thanks," stripping off her dripping coat and folding it neatly over a nearby chair. She ran her fingers through her short hair, pushing back the dripping strands from her eyes.

"Do you need something?" he asked. "If you were looking for Maureen…"

"No," she responded, an edge to her voice. "I'm decidedly _not_ looking for Maureen."

"Okay," he began. "Then, erm, why…" He trailed off, unable to think of a polite way to phrase _What are you doing here._

She understood. "Honestly, I have no idea." She heaved a sigh and sank to the couch, her face in her hands.

Mark stared at her for a moment. He didn't exactly know what to say or do- his relationship with Joanne had always been- well- an _awkward_ one. "Is everything okay?" he asked tentatively.

She shook her head. Joanne was always stressed out about one thing or another, but tonight was different. Her shoulders were slumped, and she looked…defeated. An emotion he'd rarely seen from the shrewd, ever-resourceful Joanne. And he knew that there was only one person who could break her down like that.

"Maureen," she said quietly.

"Maureen," he repeated, not needing any further explanation. He sat down next to her. "What happened?"  
She turned to face him and scowled. "I don't want to talk about it."

 _Okay, maybe now isn't the best time for sympathy…_ He jumped up, off-put by her death glare. "Sorry," he muttered, and occupied himself with the laundry once more. She said nothing.

He was soon in the middle of sorting through Mimi's clothing, feeling his face get hot as he tried to decide which items qualified as clothing and which pieces were lingerie. He made a mental note to ask her later to sort through her _own_ delicates before laundry day as he frowned down at the frilly, leopard-print thong that he now held gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.

Her abrupt voice interrupted these thoughts. "Y'know who it was this time?"

"Who?" he asked. He knew this routine all too well.

"Alexi Darling's secretary," she growled, drawing each syllable out. "Alexi _fucking_ Darling's goddamn _secretary_." He winced. He was a bit taken aback by the hostility in her voice.

"Oh," he said dumbly. He vaguely remembered how upset Joanne had been that day, Maureen chatting up the secretary while Joanne negotiated his Buzzline contract.

"Apparently, they traded numbers that day," she said, her voice now more weary than angry. "And she _kept_ it. And to think…fifteen minutes later, she was down on her knee, _swearing_ to me that she…" She shook her head vigorously as if to clear it. "Ah, screw it."

He knew he was treading dangerous waters, but he was morbidly curious now. "Did you walk in on them or something?" That had happened to _him_ more than once. And it made him feel slightly better to know that he wasn't the only one who'd had to undergo the kind of humiliation or devastation that only Maureen could inflict.

"No. Not this time. We had a date planned for tonight, and she cancelled on me, typical Maureen. So I decided to work late. And I stopped by the diner on my way back to get some dinner, and…" She sighed. " _She_ was there. Sharing a veggie burger with her new 'friend,' Kendra."

"Ouch," Mark muttered.

"Yeah. Well when we got home, we…fought. Mo kept swearing that she and Kendra just happened to bump into each other at the diner tonight, but..." Her eyes clouded over, and her jaw clenched. "But I found the number lying on her bedside table."

He took a step towards her. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," she said, staring at the floor. "I guess I should've seen this coming. But we fought, and she told me that if I still can't trust her after all this time, that it's not gonna work anymore." She looked up at him, and to his surprise her eyes were full of unshed tears. "And this time, she might be right. I just thought…" her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat. "I just thought that after… That a-after Angel…things were gonna be different. That we were okay. I guess we're not."

He looked at her for a moment, and then awkwardly placed a hand on her shoulder. She half-smiled at him before wiping her tears on her sleeve, embarrassed. "I'm sorry. I know you don't wanna deal with this. I should- I should go."

"No, you can stay if you want," he said quickly. He didn't exactly know how to comfort her. Sure, he'd gone through his own nasty breakup with the exact same woman, but somehow this was different. What Joanne had with her was _different_. It had been beautiful, and it had been real, and as much as his own breakup had hurt him, he knew without a doubt that this was much worse. Especially given everything that they'd all gone through in the past year.

"No, I should probably go and try to make this right," she said, getting to her feet. But she didn't move to get her coat. She just stood there rooted to the spot with her arms wrapped around herself, looking at it. "I should. But I don't know if I can do this anymore."

"Well," he said. "In some ways it's just easier that way. But in some ways, it's-"

"It's really not," she finished with resignation, plopping herself back down on the couch. "I love her. I do. She's…" Joanne trailed off, trying to think of the right word.

"She's something," Mark said.

"She certainly is." Joanne said nothing for several minutes after this, staring off into space again and frowning. He wondered if he ought to back off and start doing laundry again, but she just looked so sad…

"Hey," he said, standing up. "Why don't you go out and do something tonight? Get your mind off things."

She didn't move, and he tried again. "This is kind of the last place you wanna be if you're depressed. Well, unless you're Roger." This time she did look up at him, and he felt a bit more confident. "Y'know, Collins made an ATM run for us earlier. I could buy you a drink or something."

Her expression quickly became incredulous. _Well done, Mark,_ he thought sarcastically. _That's what you get for asking a lesbian out._

But after a moment, incredulity faded into a sort of intense curiosity, and she was staring at him beneath a furrowed brow as if he was a complicated algebraic equation she was trying to solve.

"Drinks?" she said.

"Yeah."

She rolled her eyes, but the corners of her mouth tugged upwards. "Coffee," she said with finality.

"Okay," he laughed, surprised but pleased that she had agreed to it.

"And _I'm_ buying."

"Even better."

She shook out the last of the water from her coat before sliding it back over her damp clothes. "And wash your hands before we go."

"Why?" he asked, reaching for his own coat and scarf.

She eyed Mimi's lingerie pile. "Because there's no telling where those things have been."

He snorted, but complied. "Okay, Mom."

That earned him a genuine smile.


	2. Chapter 2

The fact that she had agreed to go out for coffee with him of her own accord did not, unfortunately, diminish the awkwardness of the taxi ride.

When she'd said "coffee," he assumed she'd meant heading down to the Life or someplace close by, and he figured they could just walk, rain or no. But no, she'd made him leave behind his (admittedly battered) umbrella, and when she hailed a cab and muttered to the driver the name of some coffee shop located on 5th Avenue, he looked at her as though she'd sprouted another head. He was about to protest that she must be made of money if she wanted to fork out the cash it would take to get them all the way from here to yuppieville on a night like this, and why couldn't they just hop on the subway if she really wanted to. But he caught himself when he realized that as a lawyer, she could probably afford to do whatever the hell she wanted, and if that meant taking a cab to the moon and back to escape brooding on the subject of Maureen, she might as well. Although, he observed as East Village rushed past them behind a sheet of pounding rain, she wasn't doing so well if her aim was to keep from brooding. As she stared out the window, brow furrowed and frowning, it seemed as if she had brought miniature storm clouds of her own into the stale air of the cab's interior. Every now and then she let out a sigh, but she remained otherwise silent, so he just sat there next to her, fidgeting and saying nothing. Needless to say, he tried not to look at her too much in case she decided to get irritable and snappy with him again, so as to maintain the alliance of sorts, however tenuous, that they seemed to have formed tonight. But he couldn't help noticing how she looked somehow older than she was, and very, very tired.

He started when he felt her tap his shoulder awhile later. He'd been in the middle of meticulously cleaning his glasses with the corner of his scarf. "Come on," she muttered, opening her door and sliding out of the cab. He followed suit and found himself squinting through the rain that immediately pelted his glasses at the Manhattan lights. And he failed to see why she'd made him leave his umbrella… Maybe if he was wet and miserable, it would make her feel better about being wet and miserable herself.

Ten minutes later found them sitting across from each other in some upscale coffee joint with bland jazz music playing in the background, with cups of steaming, fine Italian espresso that Mark couldn't afford sitting in front of them. He attempted making small talk with her: how was work going, that sort of thing, to which she grunted one or two word responses. And when she'd tacked on a "How 'bout you?" to her answers, he found he had little to say either, because little had changed. Or, at least, little that she didn't already know about. Collins dropped by most days, Mimi seemed to be getting better since the Christmas incident, and Roger spent most of his time practically glued to her side and being especially neurotic about her well-being, despite her protestations that she no longer had a death-wish. He left out the obnoxious amount of sex Roger and Mimi were having, lest it should depress both of them further.

After awhile she muttered, "So, uh…you seeing anyone?" Mark resisted the urge to roll his eyes. As if she didn't already know the answer to that question.

He shrugged. "Nah. Party of one."

She raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. If Maureen was here right now, he knew she'd be chiming in with a singsong voice— _Sounds like SOMEONE needs to get LAID!_

More silence. He tried to concentrate on sipping his coffee and letting it warm his frozen fingers, and she just stared dully into her cup.

"Fuck this," she growled at long last, and she started digging for something in her purse. For a terrible moment he thought she was going to slap some bills on the table and get up and go home, leaving him stranded without a ride home through the rain at nearly eleven at night. But instead, he saw a second later, she'd pulled a silver flask out of her purse and was pouring its contents gratuitously into her coffee. He chuckled faintly at the absurdity of the image she presented: Joanne Jefferson, wet and disheveled, spiking her own drink. Who'd have thought.

"What is that?" he asked, smiling now.

"Captain Morgan," she said matter-of-factly.

"Rum? In coffee?"

She nodded. "Want some?"

The combination did not sound at all appetizing to him, but Captain Morgan was some good stuff, and come to think of it, a drink could most likely do them both some good right now.

She slipped him the flask. "Don't let the waitress see," she muttered under her breath as he tipped it into his frothy drink and passed it back to her. Sipping it, he realized it wasn't nearly as bad as he expected—the butter-and-spice taste of the rum meshed well with the robust, invigorating taste of expensive coffee, and gave a pleasing bite to it. "It's good," he said.

"Isn't it?" She took an undignified gulp. "Believe me, this is a lifesaver at work."

"Yeah, I bet." He shuddered. "Law offices…"  
She raised her cup as if to toast. "Law offices."

Minutes later they'd finished off their cups and ordered (and spiked) refills. Joanne still seemed to be down, but as for him, his thoughts were pleasantly fuzzy and he found himself smiling faintly.

"How the hell did it come to this?" she said abruptly.

"Maureen," he muttered before he could stop himself. He knew both he and Joanne would always care deeply for Maureen no matter what, but that didn't mean it wasn't true.

She laughed mirthlessly. "Must be. How else could I wind up getting shitfaced on 5th Avenue, and with _you_ of all people…"

"What's so bad about me?" he demanded.

She ignored that. "But I still don't get it. Why we ever got together at all, I just don't… What even held us together, anyway? It hurts like hell, sure, now that it's over, but…what did we even have?" She blinked once or twice and then looked embarrassed, as if she hadn't intended him to hear such musings.

"Sex?" he offered, and she laughed.

"Probably," she agreed, though they both knew that to her it was more than that. "Maybe she thought it was getting old, and wanted to move on to someone with more…" she took a sip directly from the flask, "… _imagination_ than me."

He shrugged. Joanne's sex life wasn't something he especially wanted to discuss no matter how much he'd had to drink. "I'm a left-brained person," she continued glumly, "and sex—well, at least _my_ kind of sex—takes quite a lot of creativity."

"I'm sure," he said stiffly, his face going slightly red. _So I guess alcohol makes Joanne talkative then…_

"And between you and me," she added in an undertone, "doing it with a man's ten times easier, if not quite as fun…" She leaned across the table and added a hasty "…and I will _kill_ you if you repeat that."

He let out a surprised chuckle. "How would you know?"

She sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "God, of all the things I never thought I'd be discussing with Mark Cohen…"

"No, tell me," he said, amused now.

She glared at him. "Let's just say that a large amount of alcohol can sometimes… _blur_ the lines of one's sexual orientation."

He snorted. "No way." Scary, straight-laced, uber-dyke Joanne sleeping with a member of the opposite sex?

"Way," she admitted. "My senior year of college. I'd had too much wine, and there was teacher's assistant, 24 years old and objectively speaking, very good-looking."

"Well, did you…enjoy it?" he asked, trying and failing to keep a straight face.

She shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. Like I said, it's a lot easier to, uh, get where you're going with a man. But I sure confused the hell out of him the next day when I told him I was gay, the poor guy."

Mark was laughing in earnest now. He couldn't help it.

" _What?_ " she snapped. Her dark cheeks were tinged with pink now. "Don't tell me that _you've_ never gotten drunk and… _done_ anything."

"Well yeah," he said, "but not with a man." He scrunched his eyebrows, scanning his memory to confirm the truth of that statement, but his thoughts were more muddled than usual right now, so he added, "Well, not that I can remember, anyway." But he wasn't usually one to get drunk enough to cause gaps in his memory, and he thought that even now he'd remember something like _that_ , so he was fairly certain he was right.

"Really?" she sounded surprised. "But you…you're so—" She was clearly having trouble trying to find the words to convey her message without offending him.

He smirked. "I'm a short, wimpy artist out of East Village?"

"Yeah," she said lamely, looking guilty. "I kind of assumed that maybe you—"

"Swung both ways?" He laughed. "Nah. I'm straight, as far as I know. I guess it's a fair assumption, though." His shoulders drooped. "Angel never failed to tell me all the time how… _adorable_ he thought I was."

"What about Roger?" she asked. "Has he ever come onto anyone while drunk?"

"Not that I know of," he said. "You've seen him. He just gets real sentimental and moody and sometimes weepy. I don't think alcohol does him all that much good, to be honest."

She nodded. "No kidding. The boy's a one-man soap opera as is."

"Oh, but there was that _one_ time…" He laughed. "Uh, he stood up on the table and did a pretty decent impression of the drag queen from Cabaret: _Veeelcome, bienvenue, velcome,_ you know. Completely out of the blue, and I still have the footage. Well, if Roger didn't destroy it. So maybe you are onto something with that alcohol theory."

"He likes Cabaret?"

"Well, he'd never admit it. But Maureen won some—" he paused and revised his words. "Uh, _we_ won some free tickets off a radio contest to go see it on Broadway, maybe three years ago. And Roger got dragged along with me and Collins and Benny and M—" He cleared his throat. "Uh, we all went together, and Roger complained the whole time, but I don't think he would've remembered all of the Emcee's lyrics word-for-word if he didn't like it just a little bit."

Now Joanne was laughing along with him, loud enough that they were starting to get funny looks from the waiters. "See? I was right," she declared.

"Well if that's so," he said, leaning forward on his elbows and feeling much better now that the weight of Joanne's sadness seemed to have lifted from both of them. "Tell me, then. On a scale of one to ten, how attractive do you find _me_ right now?" He batted his eyelashes and peered at her overtop of steepled fingers.

She rolled her eyes, as he expected. "I am not _that_ drunk, Mark."

"Fair enough, but I'm still curious," he said, leaning back in his seat and determined to keep her spirits lifted, even if that meant giving her ammunition to tease him. "Come on, scale of one to ten." He slapped his palms on the table. He waggled his eyebrows in his best attempt at mock seduction.

She responded with a look as if she'd just sniffed a very foul odor, and shook her head. "You're not my type."

"Your _type_?" he repeated, a little taken aback even if this was all in good fun. "How can you have a type if you're—"

"If I was straight, I mean."

"Not your type, huh."

"No."

"Well, what is your _type_?" He made air quotes around the word.

"I don't know," she said, "but not you."

He grinned suggestively. "You sure? The night is young, and you are wasted…" He was wheedling her now, and was pleased to see that she looked really annoyed.

"Here, I'll prove it," she snapped, and then without warning she grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket and yanked him forward. She screwed her eyes shut, as if preparing herself for something highly unpleasant, and before he could ask her just what the hell she was doing, he felt her lips on his.

It wasn't a long kiss—on the contrary, it was rather short as kisses go, a little longer than a quick peck. All the same, it left Mark too stunned to move.

She let go of his threadbare jacket and grimaced. "I told you. Ugh…you have terrible coffee breath, by the way."

He should have asked her what on earth she was thinking, and that she must've had far, far too much to drink if she thought she was entitled to just grab him and plant one on him like that no matter how gay she might be. But his whole face felt weirdly numb and all he could manage was a strangled, pitiful "W-w-what…?"

She crossed her arms. "See? _Not_ my type." She had a triumphant gleam in her eye, and she seemed to sense that she'd won. Well, if her goal was to render Mark speechless, then she certainly _had_ won.

"N-not your type…" he stammered. His cheeks felt like they were on fire. His dazed mind registered that, even though it was Joanne _, Maureen's-scary-psychotic-lover Joanne_ , this was the first time he'd been kissed by a woman since…well, since Maureen. And his body seemed to know it.

Not that she wasn't a good-looking woman, because she was, albeit in a kind of severe, intense sort of way, and a friend (of sorts), but still… _Joanne?_

Noting his peculiar demeanor, she looked surprised that the kiss had elicited such a reaction from him, and maybe a little sorry she'd done it if it had bothered him. "Um…you okay?" she asked.

He gulped. His throat felt dry. "Uh-huh."

"The rain's letting up," she said, looking out the window. "Are you about ready to go?"

He nodded, a bit too enthusiastically.

"Check!" she called over her shoulder. "Oh, and Mark?"

"Huh?"

"Thanks."

He managed a smile. "Sure thing."  
***


End file.
